


Unmoved (Yet you're moving me)

by ItsPineTime



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Everyone Needs A Hug, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Introspection, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Third Impact, Psychological Trauma, Rebuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsPineTime/pseuds/ItsPineTime
Summary: Shinji is his prime mover, his final cause,  his cockroach; the being that moves not itself but inspires all the world to move towards it.
Relationships: Ikari Shinji & Nagisa Kaworu, Ikari Shinji & Nagisa Kaworu & Souryuu Asuka Langley, Ikari Shinji/Nagisa Kaworu
Comments: 14
Kudos: 43
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Unmoved (Yet you're moving me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [surskitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/surskitty/gifts).



> Alright, so this is my contribution! I really hope you like it, I stayed up way too late polishing this up. I went with the whole "Kaworu's wierd-alien-kid-raised-in-a-cult reasons for liking Shinji" thing. If something isn't clear enough (and I really hope everything is clear) then feel free to ask!
> 
> This is basically "Kaworu and Shinji having a crisis over liking each other while humanity is fucked for 2k words and the author rants about philosophy" the fic.

_INSTRUMENTALITY PROJECT:_

_SUBJECT: Nagisa Kaworu_

_Nagisa Kaworu remembered everything from childhood; each memory filed away in an ordered corner of the mind. As such, Nagisa Kaworu has no childhood memories: no blurry, fuzzy impressions of a time that is known to exist yet cannot be returned to. There are no memories of a time when Nagisa Kaworu was not Nagisa Kaworu, because Nagisa Kaworu was born Angel and instrument to the INSTRUMENTALITY PROJECT._

_There are these five memories, and nothing else._

(Five-)

There was a time, in the seventh round of testing. A time that the mind wanders to with purpose. There was a cockroach; a hardy, stiff-shelled insect with ceaseless antennae and wavering movements. They left a cup of blue plastic behind them. Left Nagisa Kaworu with the cockroach. And it was caught: because it was what was expected to complete the task, because the task needed to be completed. It waved its tiny mandibles and ran, searching the junction between cup and wall for an escape, skittering along on its tiny insect feet with purpose, until the cup was pulled from under it and it was free, until it was caught again, the calcium hydroxide of the wall overlaying the coloured ethane blend of the cup.

It was not named (although it should have been) because there are no names but Nagisa Kaworu.

(Four-)

**Ayanami Rei. Soryu Asuka Langley. Ikari Shinji. Ikari Gendo.**

There are other names. There is a file, too: an assignment. The first.

**Ikari Shinji. Ikari, the younger. Disable by any non-physical means possible.**

**Ikari, Shinji.**   
**Age, 14**   
**Pilot of EVA Unit-01, Test Type**   
**Third Child**   
**High-functioning depressive. Suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.**   
**Son of Gendo and Yui Ikari**

All is known.

**His childhood (Lonely and isolated. “A quiet child, quite unassuming.”. ); his traumas (His mother - Yui Ikari(27, deceased)- dead before his eyes.); his fears (abandonment and loss) and insecurities (uselessness); the serial number of his VHS cassette (17065352); who sits three seats down and one seat across from him in class (Marika Zhao, 13).**

Nagisa knows Ikari.

(Ikari is a puppet; Ikari dances in the palm of Nagisa Kaworu’s hand. Knowledge is power, and Nagisa knows all there is to know about Ikari. Ikari cannot resist him now, will not see Nagisa Kawrou for Nagisa.)

(Three-)

Shinji has been beaten and hurt and trodden on, yet continues without reason.

There is no sudden, crushing realization. Kaworu did not see Shinji and decide to love him, but when Nagisa’s face splits into a beaming grin and he confesses- (”I love you”)-, Kaworu realizes it may be true. Because he looks at Shinji and sees not a human who does what he does for reasons that can be understood, but a cockroach dancing nimbly along the edge of a cage-within-a-cage, doing things without meaning.   
What-should-be-Ikari smiles, face blushing red and furious. 

“I think I love you too.”

Nagisa Kaworu smiles; for that night, he is Kaworu for Shinji, and Nagisa for SEELE.

(Two-)

He never felt the passion SEELE felt for the INSTRUMENTALITY PROJECT, never understood their reasoning. But staring at a sleeping Shinji, fingers tracing imaginary lines above the spools of invisible unconscious thoughts that gather in his head, Kaworu finally understands it. Shinji is his prime mover, his final cause, his cockroach; the being that moves not itself but inspires all the world to move towards it. 

_“Shinji. Kaworu would not mind being one with you, Shinji.”_

He says nothing of what Nagisa wants.

(One-)

Shinji does not want this, but Nagisa knows it is the only way. And so he stares the corrupted child of Lilith in the eye, and lets himself die, lets both Kaworu and Nagisa burst into nothingness for the hope of a time when there is Shinji-and-Kaworu and no-one is alone. He looks up to the metal sky, the looming hand of Shinji (God-) and-

......

.....

....

...

..

.

_They find Kaworu two weeks after, him and Asuka, when the flaring anger and desperate attachment has settled. They carry his limp, steadily breathing body to their base of operations (the most intact apartment block they could find, now stacked high with perishables and everything else they could salvage) in silent agreement, although they are stretching their rations far enough as it is. Kaworu awakes, two weeks later; his eyes settle on Shinji, his face blanks, then he turns away._

_._

_“I thought I could find out your secret” Kaworu admits days later, as they watch the stars setting across the blood-stained sea. “If I became Shinji-and-me. About how you keep on going, even when there is no reason to push you.”_

_“What you said, then-”_

_“But now I realize you are not special. You’re a human being, like Soryu Asuka Langley and Ayanami Rei, and you do things for reasons; you keep on going because you are afraid of giving up.” Kaworu continues on, his emotionless tone conveying more about his emotion than the fake Shinji had seen before._

_“You said-. You said you loved me.”_

_Kaworu does not reply. Shinji imagines the pinch in his gut as a wound to his EVA, imagines it would go away if he could just be strong enough._

_“I’m not a coward.” Shinji grits out, instead, staring Kaworu in the eyes._

_A pause, and Kaworu blinks once, as if surprised, then averts his eyes._

_._

_Kaworu is avoiding them. This much is obvious, and Shinji doesn’t know what to do about about it, or even if he should. He focuses on the essentials, and lets Kaworu stay locked in his tiny room, staring at the wall._

_The world is gripped by an almost constant winter: nights close in fast, and the food they can scavenge from empty houses will begin to dwindle soon. He and Asuka draw up a supply plan from an map they find in one of the apartments, stashed in a closet, planning to hit nearby sources of perishable food in quick succession to prevent them wasting the long-lasting stuff._   
  
_._

  
_They are rebuilding. Slowly but surely, they are recovering the land that looks like it has been overrun by nature while humanity was gone, and Shinji is glad for the work. It distracts him._

_Still, he is not any less surprised when he returns from a supply run to find Kaworu sitting, cross-legged, on the floor holding a jar, tiny, crude holes punched in the top of the metal screw lid. Inside, a cockroach runs. Kaworu turns over the jar, over and over._

_He feels like he’s intruding. Shinji clears his throat._

_“Kaworu?”_

_There is a weighty silence._

_“I was thinking of a name, for my pet. I had a name- before- , but it doesn’t seem to fit anymore.”_

_A cockroach in a jar joins their- team?-, still unnamed even after the tense discussion. Asuka is not pleased, but then again she rarely is, but seems to acquiesce as it makes Kaworu more human. (“Flipping over a jar and watching a bug scurrying around instead of staring at the wall for hours on end. Still creepy. Far less psycho.”)_

_Shinji is not sure what to think of it._

_._

_“What is the point?” Asuka asks, one day, eyes staring towards the boundless sky and ocean of red. “Humanity is doomed. We’re doomed, if this winter doesn’t end.”_

_Neither of them answer. Kaworu seems about to, then pauses and thinks better. Shinji wishes he were anywhere but there._

_Asuka never expected an answer anyway._

_Kaworu begins to join their supply runs sometimes._

_._

_They are back here. All three of them outside, with the stars setting against the bloody sea._

_“There’ll be more.” Kaworu begins, unexpected but calm and balanced. “There will. It will begin slow, but more will come. When I was me-and-everyone-else, I wasn’t whole; I was separated from the me-in-Shinji-Ikari and the me-in-Asuka-Langley. People will notice this. They will come, if we just remember them.”_

_Asuka’s eyes reflect the pity of a person who has long given up hoping, but she doesn’t reply. She doesn’t often, these days, which leaves it down to Shinji._

_Kaworu looks, at him, fire in his eyes, bright with passion for the first time in so many months-_

_“They’ll come.”_

_-and Shinji does not have the heart to tell him otherwise, cheeks flushed a heady red. He has forgotten that Kaworu could be so effortlessly attractive, that this boy had once stolen his heart._

_._

_Shinji is cornered by Kaworu one day in the makeshift storeroom them have set up in what used to be someones’ bedroom, the other boy snatching one of the two tinned food boxes marked for storage from his weighed down arms and keeping stride with him, unnervingly upbeat._

_“I was thinking- well, what job I could do when we have more people. Have you thought of that?”_

_“Mmm.”_

_“That was a question, Shinji.” Kaworu laughs roughly, the sound catching in his throat and becoming a cough, though he continues smiling._

_“Oh-!” Shinji stumbles over the words “I, uh, haven’t thought about it. And, uh, you?”_

_Kaworu beams at him, and Shinji has a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach._

_“I was thinking, when the children come out, they’ll need someone to teach them, right? Children are naturally more inquiring, so there’ll definitely be more of them than schoolteachers. And I know a lot of things.”_

_Shinji is struck by the oddity of Kaworu pitching this idea to him, but listens._

_Neither of them make the trip to the storeroom alone again. It becomes a routine, and while Asuka scowls with no real fire and comments acidically on their “little chats”, neither one feels inclined to change._

_And if their elbows brush when the walk side-by-side through the corridors of the fifth-floor apartment, well, the corridors are narrow._

_._

_Kaworu insists they set up their new base near enough to the blood-sea to catch anyone emerging. Asuka rolls her eyes and Shinji feels a vague unease, but they agree. The food situation here is stable enough for the time being anyway, thanks to the masses of tinned goods everyone hoarded before the Third Impact._

_They split the supply runs evenly now, although for safety they agree to go in pairs while the last person holds down base. The light is back in Kaworu’s eyes, some days; when he talks (and sometimes days pass where they are all silent), he talks of the books he is unearthing from each home he visits, eyes shining adorably bright despite his strained smile and the dark circles under each eye. Shinji, in turn, begins to read some of the easier ones; he avoids the heavy-bound, dense philosophy books, but devours the manga voraciously, to Kaworu’s amusement._

_“I always knew you were a born otaku, Shinji.”_

_“Well- I mean, I can barley read most of those, and there’s not so much hope for me finishing high school now. It’s just easiest.”_

_Kawiru laughs, light and breezy. “As long as it brings you joy. Does it?”_

_“It does.”_

_“Then we’re both happy.”_

_._

_“When are you going to give that thing a name?” Shinji inquires, crouching down to watch Kaworu as he flips the jar over and over, over and over, like he’d been doing for hours. “Or throw it. Preferably throw it.”_

_“Not yet. I still don’t know.” Kaworu’s tone is distracted. His eyes remain glued to the jar. Shinji reaches for the bug, touches the smooth glass. The cockroach skitters away from his finger and he traces its path over the arching surface. His other hand comes to rest on Kaworu’s, Shinji’s heart hammering a war drum._

_Kaworu’s hand stills, but does not protest, his fingers squeezing Shinji’s in acknowledgement; Shinji can feel the tumultuous, irregular pulse through his hand._

_._

Ikari Shinji,

You asked, when I first came, what what I told you before meant- and I wanted to tell you.

I have never loved, you, Ikari Shinji.

Before, I loved an idea of Shinji; I loved the idea of grasping an impossible concept, of being able to do things without reason. I thought that it would make me human, but now I see that it is impossible to move without reason, no matter how human you are. To be human is to live even without knowing the reason behind it all. I realize that now.

I like you. Nagisa Kaworu likes Ikari Shinji a lot, for so many reasons I could name (you smile. Your persistence. The way you blush. Your strength and weakness), but Nagisa Kaworu does not love Ikari Shinji.

The Shinji I loved was a pleasant lie. The Ikari I controlled was a fiction of folders and surveillance reports. I loved these both in different ways, but it is only you, Ikari Shinji, the whole Ikari Shinji, that I, Nagisa Kaworu, wish to love now.

.

“Hey, Kaworu? Can I tell you something”

“Shinji? What’s up?”

“I’ll do it with you.”

“You mean-”

“Your teaching. _When_ they come, I’ll do it with you. We can do it. Together.”

.

  
The cockroach remains unnamed.


End file.
